KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

120 Antinomy of Freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant conceives the psychological
aspects of the problem of freedom as part of natural necessity.
Everything that has to do with wanting belongs to the causally determined
world of appearance. Freedom has to do with "ought."
No matter how many natural grounds or how many sensuous impulses may
impel me to will, they can never give rise to the "ought", but only to a willing
which, while very far from being necessary, is always conditioned; and the
"ought" pronounced by reason confronts such willing with a limit and an
end — nay more, forbids or authorises it. (B576)
The consequence is that only those actions that have a moral dimension,
that result from an ought, can be called free. The fact, that I
can raise my hand when I want to, proves only that I have the freedom
of the turnspit.
The Transcendental Idea of Freedom
Thus far Kant has not advanced beyond the position of
Leibniz, who also placed moral freedom and physical causality or
necessity in different spheres. Leibniz, however, introduced the
principle of pre-established harmony, so that he could always guarantee
a "harmony between the physical kingdom of nature and the
moral kingdom of grace" as well as a harmony in the realm of
nature itself between the sub-area of efficient causes and that of purposes.
85 Since Kant does not base his philosophy on this principle, he
needs some mechanism to guarantee a coordination between the
two realms. Kant's problem is to explain transcendental or cosmological
freedom, that is, to explain how the moral freedom of
humans agents as things in themselves can be causally effective in
the world of appearances. In the Prolegomena Kant poses the problem
as follows: 86
But if natural necessity is referred merely to appearances and freedom
merely to things in themselves, no contradiction arises if we at the same time
assume or admit both kinds of causality, however difficult or impossible it
may be to make the latter kind conceivable.
The first step in Kant's proof of the (logical) possibility of a
causality of freedom consists in an extention of the concept of
85 "Monadology,"§87; GP VI,622; PPL, 652.
86 Prologomena, §53, p. 84; W 3,216; Ak 4,343